ROKO Cancer held one of its ‘breast cancer detection camps’ at the Indian Habitat Centre in New Delhi on Friday. A mobile cancer detection bus is present at the Centre from 11.00 am to 3.00 pm offering free 12-minute mammograms and examinations by female attendants. Additional information on self-examination techniques that can be used to detect the cancer are also available. This was the NGO’s 242nd camp in India after holding camps in Hyderabad, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Gujarat and Maharashtra.

Isha Bhandari, Director of the ROKO Cancer Campaign in India, has a simple message for Indian women “love your life, you can save your life through early detection.”

The ROKO Cancer Campaign was established in England by Ajinder Pal Singh Chawla in memory of his wife who died of breast cancer at an early age. The campaign was launched in New Delhi in January 2006 with the goal of ‘empowering women through breast cancer awareness’, said Bhandari. He claims that the level of awareness of breast cancer in India is “worse” than other countries, particularly in rural areas that are more “orthodox and conservative” and “where people do not feel comfortable talking about breast cancer. “

Shoba, a resident of Zamrudpur in south Delhi and an attendant at the camp, waits in a queue outside of the cancer detection bus to be examined. “I do not know a great deal about the process, what a mammogram is, how to detect breast cancer or what this will involve, but I am not nervous.”